For Social Studies, the Prime Academic Preschool students are learning about “Optical Illusions”. Last week, we learned that what we see is not always the reality. After a quick review of what optical illusions are, we looked at “Hidden Pictures”. First, they looked at a picture… it seemed to be a simple picture of an old woman and an old man.

The students looked more closely at the picture. After a while, one student noticed something interesting. There was a person within the old man’s face! The other students didn’t believe him at first and were fascinated as they looked more carefully at the picture. They were so excited when they found more pictures hidden.

Next, we tried doing “Magic Eye”. When you look at these pictures in a certain way, you can see an image pop out of the page. It took some practice and the students tried hard to figure out the image as they stared at the page. It was like doing a puzzle and they were very keen to solve it!

The students were having so much fun with the “optical illusions” and so… we had a race! The class got into two teams and raced to identify all the animals hidden within the picture.

“Look! I see an alligator!” the student said as he pointed to the picture.

“It’s a snake,” he said as he traced around it to show his teammates.

This student came closer to see. “I want to find it, too!”

“Look! I found this!” this student said as he danced and mimicked the animal he found. Can you guess what he found?

“It’s a monkey!” he said excitedly.

The students were so amused by the pictures hidden within pictures in the “Hidden Pictures”, and they were very curious as to how an image could pop out of the paper in the “Magic Eye”. Their eyes lit up when they finally “solved” the “Magic Eye” puzzles. “It’s like magic!” was what they said. Not everyone can see the image in the “Magic Eye” pictures and it does take a little trick with your eyes to see them. Do you have “magic” eyes?

Prime Academic Preschool Gotanda